Kingdom Hearts Fan Fiction ❯ Alkalinity ❯ Ammonia ( Chapter 8 )

A/N: The holiday weekend has ended, and I want to write again! I was hoping to use my days off to mull over this chapter, explore it in great detail; instead I was stressing about how to act around my stepmother's family, so there goes that.

 

 

It's been a while since I addressed reviews…

 

 

kairiyumi: I'm already planning a vignette that will tell the story of those peanuts, and it's all your fault! … Seriously, though. I can picture them listening to all these conversations on airplanes, being swept back into storage every time they aren't eaten - it's the “if walls could talk” thing, ne?

 

 

alicia: It can, and does. I'm rather familiar with it, myself. When something is too much for us, the mind will often invent explanations, or gradually alter memories until they have no relation to what actually occurred. As for the past lives… Some things I can't tell you yet. And the first six chapters were alkaline metals, while future chapters will be alkaline in some way.

 

 

OtakuLady: I shall not tell you, of course, dearie. Rather, I will happily drag you through the maze with me.

 

 

kachiqua: You aren't a pusher, you're a reader. One is far more valued than the other. The fact that you're eager to read more, that you're involved in the story, brings me only joy (not stress). And I do think that Mr. Kalb is going to read it when he has time. Hopefully it won't cause him pain, ne?

 

 

leafyaki: As usual, I really don't know what I'm doing until you tell me. ^_^ And that's all I can say, because otherwise I'll get sucked into the story-discussion I so desire, and likely end up telling you everything. Which wouldn't be fair. So now I exercise my self-control.

 

 

chibi neko doll: I'm so glad that I seem to be writing a story that people other than myself have been craving!

 

 

blockofthewritingkind: At this point I can't tell you without spoiling a few things. But you were right about the Aztecs. I realize it could have been read as any number of Meso or South American civilizations, but that was the one.

 

 

Disclaimer: Roses are red, violets are blue; me no own, so you no sue!

 

 

x(X)x

 

 

"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it." - Montaigne

 

 

x(X)x

 

 

They still didn't believe him. They told him it wasn't real, that all was fine.

 

 

It felt as though his chest was shattered, crumbling away into blackness, but he did not tell them that they lied.

 

 

They couldn't see the flames that wound around him when he tried to sleep, couldn't see the welts that made him scream and writhe. They put him in corners, hit him, told him to stop burning himself. They threw away all the matches in the house, all the lighters, candles, the nightlights, lamps, and confined him to his room.

 

 

Then there was blankness. Sterility. Soft voices with screams quickly captured by padded walls and heavy doors.

 

 

He could still see the flashes of red at his window, when there was still enough daylight left to salvage color. But they grew less frequent.

 

 

Then they stopped entirely. And he was finally alone.

 

 

It was heralded as his great breakthrough. As the dreams faded he could finally tell the woman and her clipboard that yes, something was wrong with him, it was all his imagination.

 

 

Just to be safe, they kept giving him pills. Pills to reign in his imagination. Pills to stave off violence, after the time he tried to break the glass of his window. Antipsychotics, because they still hadn't forgotten the ways his screams reverberated through steel. Antidepressants because what was a chemical cocktail without them?

 

 

The combinations did odd things, made him feel the fire in his veins again. They made him uncooperative.

 

 

Restraints and needles.

 

 

After ten months Roxas was discharged; silent, blank-eyed, and “cured”.

 

 

x(X)x

 

 

He heard Namine, high and frantic, accompanied by a unfamiliar low voice. Colors swam before his slitted eyes.

 

 

Fingers tried to pry his mouth open. He bit down savagely and let the coppery blood fill his mouth until they were jerked away.

 

 

He drifted back into unconsciousness while hysterics rang around him.

 

 

x(X)x

 

 

Some memories are easier to bear as dreams. More and more it feels like at the end you were waking up rather than moving on.

 

 

But Roxas traced the scar on his chest. It was slightly raised, and if he squinted at it in the mirror he saw a crude triangle.

 

 

When he looked down without the benefit of glass, he saw a childish heart, cartoonish and unsteady. He remembered breaking the glass, the fractured bones of his hand, the edge that was more shallow than the others because a helpful someone had finally grabbed his arm.

 

 

His inspection was interrupted when Marluxia stepped into the bathroom, holding his bandaged fingers away from his body.

 

 

The physician had talked to Namine. They had agreed to let Roxas return to his own rooms, since the school and the infirmary were equally isolated from the rest of the world.

 

 

Roxas was glad to be away from the heavy, floral air of the hospital wing. There were flowers everywhere, petals carpeting the marble. Yet all the beds were neat and empty.

 

 

He tried very hard to ignore the trays of gleaming equipment on every available surface. Scalpels, saws, forceps, scissors, drills, and clamps, all pristine and neatly arrayed, like the treasured merchandise of an avid collector.

 

 

x(X)x

 

 

Knowing what he knew (or rather, remembered) Roxas found himself staring at the dark canopy of his bed rather than sleeping. Just as he felt the memories themselves, sharp and vivid, he could remember the fog of their suppression.

 

 

He recognized the fog now, saw it overlapping his recollection of events since his arrival. He pushed and tugged at it, pried and lashed, but it only reformed, never revealing.

 

 

After a sleepless night of strain, it parted only to remind him of a hot hand touching his shoulder, and the livid marks he scraped away.

 

 

Four fingers. The side of a thumb. A palm.

 

 

Too late he remembered that ignorance was bliss.

 

 

x(X)x

 

 

A/N: Sorry about the shortness, but you know my feelings on the matter. ^_^

 

 

Leijhana tu'sai to all readers and reviewers!